It's official: the government is today publishing a bill that will make child poverty illegal.
A surprise announcement from the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) explains that the new child poverty bill will enshrine in law a duty to eradicate child poverty by 2020, "so that all children have the best start …

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Perhaps the question is...

... how does one legislate against misanthropy?

The fact that a government needs to legislate tells one how bad the situation is and I'd guess that the perps are probably government employees anyway.

But, as far as the UK goes, government agencies are terribly difficult to tie down. It would be reasonable, under current UK practice, for an inspector witnessing a criminal act on inspection to grant the local authority 3 months while the inspector reviews and files one's papers.

Lack of accountability and an equal lack of urgency give rise to horrendous difficulties.

eg: a local authority would view 3 months minus 1 day as optimal timeline to effect a change over a criminal action.

@MIddleclass Rag, Middlecalls tits moaning about the Poor being Rich

I'm guessing reading is beyond your level of comprehension as your post has nothing to do with the comments here or the article (I double checked.)

Why do people think that the only people in poverty are the unemployed? A large number of hard working people are in poverty, the kind of people who have two part time jobs and still come below 11k a year yet still get taxed like everyone else. They're the group that deserve the most help, and alot of people on benefits are there in large part due to that anomaly - Why get a hard, low paid job, when you only get a small amount more then you would on benefits after tax?

The benefit system may need re-working, but the tax-break needs raising and it needs raising now - and yes it means those above the tax break paying more tax and probably a reduction in benefits- but hey life sucks.

Nonsense upon stilts

This clearly shows that (as I keep saying) the present NuLab government is way, way to the right of the Conservatives. It's so far right it meets Stalin coming the other way (and might even surprise him in a couple of ways).

The whole idea of eradicating child poverty is hopeless, largely because the very idea of child poverty in a country like Britain is absurd. The poorest in our country are far better off than people who are thought to be reasonably well heeled in some places. Compare British children's lives with those in Zimbabwe: now that is real poverty.

In what ways are British children poor? What do they lack that they ought to have (that can be bought with money, of course)? Do they have the wrong kind of trainers - ones that cost less than £100? Are they deprived of 96-inch plasma TVs and the very latest Playstations?

In fact, the most important things that children need are those that cannot be bought with money. Love. Attention. Being taken seriously. Role models. Discipline (yes, really). Education. And yet this government, which has done its level best to prevent anyone being able to buy a good education, yet which relentlessly pulls down the level of state education, whines about child poverty!

Yes, poverty as measured by this ridiculous apology for a government is *relative*! If the average person gets twice as rich, those who only get a quarter richer will now be poor! That's insane for a start. Then, children are poor by definition: they aren't legally allowed to own property! So all you can do is measure their parents' wealth. How on earth does that help? One family may not have two beans to rub together, yet lavish love and attention on its children, providing them with superb at-home education, excellent home-cooked nutrition, and plenty of natural healthful exercise. Another family may have millions, but neglect its children disgracefully, send them to schools where they are miserable to get them out of the way, feed them on fashionable garbage, and deprive them of any chance to get exercise.

In any case, who ever said that wealth is the key to happiness, health, wisdom, or even future prospects? Andrew Carnegie began life dirt poor, yet became a billionaire. Jesus of Nazareth came of a poor family, but turned out well nevertheless. The laws of libel restrain me from citing some of the obvious examples of scions of rich houses who grew up as awful people, but you can probably think of your own examples.

An even Simpler and Cheaper and Surer Guaranteed Answer?

"The simple answer is to offer every female over the age of consent £2000 if she agrees to have an IUD fitted. This will end the supply of children feeding into the system." ..... By Anonymous Coward Posted Saturday 13th June 2009 18:23 GMT

Offer a lesser sum to all males who volunteer to have a vasectomy. One Giant Step for Man, One Small Snip for Mankind.

Workhouses 2.0

A really easy fix

As we all know, it is this dreadful poverty that causes kids to perform poorly in school.

We also know that a person with poor school results is more likely to end up on the dole, being a drag on the economy.

So here is an easy and cheap way to fix the problem:

1) Monitor kids' school results. Select the bottom 10% in the class. They're the kids that are a victim of this poverty.

2) Pay their parents $5000 (or quid equivalent) per year as an anti-poverty education stimulus (APES) until the kid does better.

3) If the kid doesn't do better in one year of APES, then they clearly need better stimulation so double the APES to $10k.

So where does the money come from? Well if a person is employed their whole life they will pay taxes which will cover APES in the long term. If they just end up on the dole they'd cost many times the APES. Thus, think of APES as an investment.

Of course the right wing could argue that parents might game the system and expect the kids to fail to bring in money, but that's patently absurd. We all know that poverty stricken parents care for their kids as well as, if not better than, rich parents.

what happens when they fail...

Passing a law that states that it hands the power to make rulings over to a single person after a set period of time doesn't sound that democratic to me. In ten years, all welcome our new sumpreme ruler...

theory and practive

Sounds good in theory but in practice it will probably end up as a Kafkaesque nightmare machine with police helping gestapo-ized social workers kick doors down at 3am to tear families apart and imprison parents for allowing kids to wear non govt-approved shoelaces to school. Whilst the parents are imprisoned the kids will likely end up in 'care' homes where they will be routinely drugged with anti-psychotics, prozac, ritalin etc and intermittently molested by the supposed 'carers' and afterwords grow up to be serial killers.

@goat jam

"Just ask any farmer. If you want to breed animals you need lots of females and only 1 or 2 males to service them."

Actually, you don't even need the males at all. In the UK, there are a number of schemes that allow semen to be obtained, stored and farmers can then buy it in order to impregnate their stock with the output from the best of breed.

The poor males don't even see the females, just a vet with a set of big rubber gloves and a large glass beaker.

DNA

It's all so the police don't have to make up charges to get DNA from future criminals. All they need to do now is arrest all kids on council estates for being poor then take a DNA sample so they will be easy to identify when they commit a crime later in life.

Workhouses could be the answer

Obviously not dickensian workhouses, although seeing some of the poverty stricken kids roaming the streets it wouldn't be a bad idea, but something more like boarding schools. If you can't support your kids, instead of being given more free money, they get removed from your care and put in to a state run boarding school. No more having kid after kid purely to be guaranteed housing and benefits.

legally kids have to be in school anyway and there are massive problems with truancy so it would solve more than one problem.

Then if you want; them back, you simply have to demonstrate that you can support them as well as yourself. Probably not a very popular solution, but if you can't even support yourself, it's unfair to leave children in your care as well.

They know they've lost

So the Government is just laying a trap for the Tories. Effectively setting what the Tories' policy on 'child poverty' will be for them before they get in power. If the Tories try to fight this then they can be made out to look like child-hating bastards. Real gutter politics.

Why not just pass a law that all future governments must be led by Gordon Brown and any election that disgrees with this is invalid ?

@ SmallYellowFuzzyDuck

You really do have a problem don't you?

I'm on benefits because I was diagnosed as terminally ill in May 2008. My electricity is not paid for, my coal is not paid for, my television licence is not paid for, my water bill is not paid for, my vehicle is not paid for, my phone bill is not paid for, my broadband is not paid for, my home insurance isn't paid for, and would you believe it.. my Sky TV is not paid for.

My credit rating is OK but for a LOT of people, they can only clothe themselves with "catalogue" companies because that is the only credit they can get. If they get out of paying the extortionate prices they were charged in the first place then it it is because of some stupid company trying to profiteer from poverty in the first place.

Oh, and I only have a 32" LCD TV which I paid for from my savings.

So people on other planets like you and your oh-so-gracious wife should really get an education and a grip on reality.

so that all children have the best start in life

"so that all children have the best start in life and have the opportunities to flourish".

Surely all things are relative. Surely that's the best start in life for a child with those parents. Children from wealthier families generally have the best start in life but sometimes the best writers and artists come from disadvantaged families. Does this mean each child will be assessed to see if they should me fostered with a richer or poorer family than their natural parents?

The other problem with this policy is that the target can also be met in another way. Either you have the best start in life or you have no start at all. I suspect it would be easier to sterilize poor parents than provide them with everything the rich parents can offer.

Hopefully nothing will happen, because I don't like the idea of people being sterilized. Maybe this policy has already begun. Maybe the HPV vaccine will reduce the fertility of teenagers and they will need IVF at age 30, which will ofcourse be means tested.